


Heat

by Alecellent



Series: Heat and Clockwork [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kinda, Rated teen for language, Sadstuck, Trans Dave Strider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:02:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25997182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alecellent/pseuds/Alecellent
Summary: You really should have known better, you muse, cause nothing about the game is fair. Oh well, you suppose. No use in complaining about it now.---The game, in it's everlasting glory, send Bro back to Earth C, hollowed out with Cal's influence. Dave doesn't take it very well.
Relationships: Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas (mentioned), Dave's Bro | Beta Dirk Strider & Dave Strider, June Egbert & Dave Strider
Series: Heat and Clockwork [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1886914
Comments: 18
Kudos: 69





	Heat

You really should have known better, you muse, cause nothing about the game is fair. Oh well, you suppose. No use in complaining about it now.

And as a white hot sun sets on a blazing, near Texan, sky, Dave Strider heads back inside to greet his long gone, hollowed out puppet of a brother, three years dead and back to life, like a mockery of Jegus. Jesus. Whatever.

* * *

Something about the blank stares he gives you makes you angrier than anything he’s ever done to you back on your Earth. You’re angry a lot, these days. Angry about the childhood you never got, angry about how you can’t seem to stop. Simmering heat on a long tar road, mirages clouding your vision. 

“Sup Bro” you say. He doesn’t respond. Figures; it’s just one of those days, you suppose. “You want somethin’ for dinner? I was gonna start, but if you ain’t hungry yet, we can wait.” More silence. You gotta say, your Bro was always quiet, even in your distant childhood, but since he’s been returned to you, fresh out of the grave, it’s gone far past irony.

It boils your anger hotter.

“Seriously Bro, you’ve been back three years now, ya really gonna keep up with this silent bullshit? Not gonna call me a homo for datin’ Karkat? Not gonna even call me-” you pause. Somehow, dead naming yourself in front of the vacant nightmare of your Bro doesn’t seem like a great move. Not that it’d get him to do much more than flinch. Guess that puppet son of a bitch fucked him up something fierce.

“Right. Whatever then, Bro. Help yourself to some Cheetos or whatever, dinner’ll be soon.”

* * *

As you pull out the pots for another night of mac ‘n cheese, (which, take that 13 year old Dave, you might not have the repression he’s got, but you get to eat the meals he could only dream of. You could only dream of. Timeline doubles are weird) you consider again the differences between your Bro and your bro, Dirk Strider. Cause Bro was homophobic, and Dirk’s happily dating Jake. Bro called you slurs, but Dirk taught you how to bind, so like. What gives? They’re the same man right? Splinters of the same vase?

Bro didn’t take his shirt off much around you -had to maintain that inhuman, ironic facade- but Texas is hot, and as far as you can remember from your prepubescent beat downs (which, to be fair, isn’t a lot. Years of stacked concussions means besides the hurt and the heat and the stitched up wounds, you remember less than you think you should from your childhood. Or maybe you didn’t have much of a childhood. You’re still working through that one), Bro didn’t have top surgery scars. He also didn’t have tits like you do, or like Dirk does for that matter, which means either Cal was bad enough to scare them away, or he was born cis, which. Is bullshit, for one, but also confusing.

You know from seeing your own timelines, that all Daves are trans time and time again. Probably gay little motherfuckers too, if you asked. But splinters of heart don’t seem to follow the same rules. 

And that makes sense, you muse, idly mixing milk into your roux. Dirk may be trans, but Hal doesn’t even have a body. He goes by he/him pronouns, but you figure gender is different to intertelenological beings. Except Bro isn’t just a splinter of heart. He’s a splinter of _time_. And you know from all your days time hopping, back and forth, bringing your best on LOHAC, _time_ doesn’t like messy splinters. It’s cookie cutter gear molds and _just_ timed flash steps, cause if you fuck up, if you slip, it’s another timeline down the drain.

I warned you about the stairs, bro.

Which means that this fucked up, empty version of your Bro is even more fucked up, cause you expected Dirk, or hell even the evil son of a bitch that was _your_ Bro. And instead, you got a Bro that barely reacts when you talk to him, who looks guilty on the best of days, and faded on the others, like the Texas sun bleached him of his personality, left whited out concrete on his soul.

Tough luck fucker, he doesn’t get that excuse. Not after he hurt you.

“Shit” you mutter. Some time between adding the milk and getting _sorely_ distracted, you’ve let your roux burn, flour turning a sad, wilted brown at the bottom of your pan. “Mother-“ you sigh. Whatever. It’s fine. It’s chill. You dump in your cheese, and watch it curdle yellow along with your burnt food, stomach churning.

You try not to let it make you angry.  
You’re angry a lot, these days.

You suddenly think of June. You miss her, you think. She kicked off to this Earth’s San Fran a few years ago when her dad came back, and honestly, you can’t blame her. If you lived in San Francisco, you’d also fuck off to go enjoy the clear skies or whatever. Plus, the climate suits her- cool, misty blues, nothing like the blistering, sunburnt red of Texas. You almost swear it wasn’t this hot back in _your_ Texas except, yeah, it probably was. Doesn’t make you hate it any less though.

You should call her.

You’re not gonna call her.

Cause what would you even say to her? “Hey June, it’s Dave, just wanted to call and let ya know that I got mad cookin' my shit dinner, and it made me think’a ya. My whole life’s down the shitter. Yours? Anyways, talk soon.” Yeah, no thanks, you gotta be in a better mood to talk to her. A _cooler_ mood.

That whole “cool” persona. _God_ , it was so stupid. Which isn't to say you don't keep it up- plus, you still like irony, and you still wear your fabled Ben Stiller sunglasses (and holy shit isn’t that a surprise. His sunglasses outlived him. Congrats dude, on being one of the 9 humans to survive Armageddon, even if it was done balanced on some douchebag’s face), but you think that you were marked sunstained since the moment you were born. The same way June’s born cool in a way you’ll never be.

God _damn_ you miss June.

You miss June and Rose and Jade and you wanna say Dirk, but honestly Dirk’s a five minute walk away, you couldn’t miss that man if you tried. But June went back to San Fran, and Rose went back to New York, and Jade went back to whatever middle of nowhere fuck off island in the Pacific she lived on, and now none of them will answer their Pesterchums, insistent on switching to a more modern chat log. And you can’t even blame any of them, cause you went back to Texas, just the same.

See, it’s not that you wanted to go back to Texas. But something about it feels right. The heat. The concrete. The red skies, blistering, burning hot, with a sun so white it looks like God’s eye, all sclera, no pupil, like it’s ready to eat you whole. Even LOHAC didn’t feel familiar in the same way. The sky was too dark, and Houston was _never_ dark. Always some asshole awake to speed past red lights and honk at your window. And you sort of idealized it in your mind, to avoid thinking about the fact that you think you’re trapped here. You think when you were born, the Texas sun marked you somehow, so that even now, three years a god, you still don’t know how to leave.

You put the bowl of shitty mac 'n cheese on the table too hard. You don’t like thinking about that.

* * *

“Hey Bro, dinner.” He stirs from his half lidded daze on the couch, and stumbles over to your ratty little table to eat. You watch him as he does, more paying attention to his metronomic movements than to your own dinner, cooling in front of you. 

Bite, chew, swallow.  
Bite, chew, swallow.

“So you’re not gonna say shit about how I burnt the food?” you say, interrupting the silence. “Not gonna call me a fuckin’ girl for cookin’? Did that puppet steal your teeth with your brain?” He keeps eating. You boil. “ _ **God damnit didn’t you hear me, I’m askin’ if you still got teeth!!**_ “ 

He looks at you. Distantly, you realize he hasn’t done that since he’s been resurrected. Distantly, you realize you’re shaking. “It’s not your fault,” Rose would say. “It’s trauma, you can’t help it.” And maybe you can’t. But it doesn’t help the fact that you’re 19 years old, living with your husk of a brother, and you’re 13 again, bleeding red onto the concrete.

You hear your heart in your head, so loud, you hardly even notice that he’s started talking to you. “What's that, Bro?” He tilts his head in a way that’s so _Dirk_ that it almost kills you. “I _said_ I’m proud’a ya, Dave. I’m proud’a ya.” He stares at you for another moment, before slumping, like saying that took everything out of him. And maybe it did. That’s the first full sentence he’s said to you in three years. And it’s that he’s _proud_.

You think about how 13 year old Dave would have died for that. You think about how it makes 19 year old Dave want to cry. 

You really should have known better. Nothing about this game is fair. Of course you couldn’t have catharsis.

Bro returns to his meal, and you shudder. Think about the irony of nature versus nurture. Because Rose and June grew up cold, cool, frostbite anger and misty lights respectively. Rose with New York snow and a biting, steely wind at her core, strong and evergreen, never bending or relenting. June with the night time breeze, ghosts, something soft and bittersweet, prankster’s gambits and laughter carried on the wind. Jade, spring time warm, strong and enduring, kind but not frail, alive in a way that makes her beautiful beyond words. And you. Hollow. Dry. Burnt to the core. Dust coating the inside of your lungs and the sun above, a baking, bitter heat, that brings you to your knees. Or maybe that’s Bro’s legacy. You’re not really sure.

You need to get out of Texas. You can’t get out of Texas. You want to see your friends. Your friends don’t want to see you. You love Texas in the same way a 13 year old child loves his brother, in the only way you know how, with reverence and adoration and the gut knowledge that it’ll be the death of you.

Blitzing summer heat, glaring white sun; you’re 13 again, looking up at a red sky, and thinking “God hates me, and I am going to die”. Or maybe you were looking up at Bro. Aren’t they the same?

Not anymore, you suppose. The Bro methodically eating mac 'n cheese in front of you isn’t the same Bro that beat you bloody on Houston roof tops. That Bro’s legacy lives on in _you_ , cause when you kiss Karkat, it’s not Bro telling you you’re going to hell, it’s not Bro who puts your binder on while you sleep. You think that when you put your world to rest, three people left with your friends. Ben Stiller, your Bro, and you.

Your Bro and the sun are the same thing. They always are.

So maybe that’s why you miss your friends so much. Because more than anything in the world, you wish you weren’t in Texas, or at least with this sun, and when you banter with Rose, or hug Jade, or play pranks on June, you’re in New York, or the Pacific, or San Francisco, with all it’s streetlight ghosts, instead of melted black tar. Maybe you want to get away, not from Bro, whom Cal tore to pieces and the game stitched back together, not from your dinky little apartment that you, a god, are still paying rent for, but from yourself, from the sun, from the blitzing, white hot heat you carry inside yourself. 

You’re just not sure they want to see you.

Mist doesn’t last in Houston. Neither does snow, nor plants. Everything withers down to nothing, eventually. The sun will always be your grave. And as much as you want to run from that Texas sun that must have swallowed you whole, you can never escape what broken, fucked up shards of Bro you’ve internalized, compartmentalized, swallowed like the sun.

Splinters of the heart aren’t so clean. It’s almost ironic, that you were a puppet for a puppet.

Bro leaves his empty dish in the sink, and you think about how your Bro would have left it out to moulder. Bro wears slippers and quietly trails off to bed, and you think about how your Bro would have pulled you up for a strife. Bro is dead, and you are so tired.

Maybe Fenrir doesn’t always eat the sun.

Whatever anger you had earlier has burnt down to cinders. You want to get to know this Bro, who’s proud of you even though you burnt dinner. You want to know if he remembers. You’re tired of being the sun. Outside, night finally begins to overtake day; it’s 8 PM but it doesn’t really go dark in Texas until 9. You think about how it’s only 7 in San Francisco. 

You miss your friends.

Idly, you watch as the sky burns- first pink, then orchid, then yellow, then a stunning, blitzing red. The sun is white hot, like God’s eye, all sclera and no pupil, and you wonder if it tires of burning, just like you.

You pull out your phone and call June.

“Hello? Dave? Is that you?”

You don’t want to be the sun.

“Yeah. It’s me.”

**Author's Note:**

> I am simply a Houston trans man, thinking about my comfort Houston trans man. But seriously, it's hot as hell here, and we don't get rain until next week, and I do love Texas sometimes but god damn do I wish we could skip some of the summer. Oh well. Find me over at @alecellent on Tumblr and Twitter, or don't, cause honestly I don't post shit. But hey. Check in if you'd like. Any comments, kudos, any interaction really is greatly, /greatly/ appreciated, and I'll see y'all in the next part


End file.
